3. I guess it's practice teaching you what not and what to do to avoid fights you can't win. I can't really answer that since I'm not playing on ironman, too many bugs as of now.
I always keep a backup fleet stored somewhere with a reserve of fuel, supplies, and crew.
If I'm playing nexerelin (in version 0.72, it has not been updated for 0.8 yet) I usually start with a mining fleet so that I can build income safely and use the proceeds from that to buy a two frigates and a combat freighter. When I take that 3 ship group out for light bounties I leave the mining ships in storage. If I'm successful in light bounty hunting I move up to a cruiser/destroyer with a few (new) frigates, while storing the light combat fleet. I then continue building in this way, leaving behind interim fleets in storage to regress back to in case something goes wrong.
Knowing when to retreat, and getting good at it, is also critical.
In 0.8, without nexerelin, your best bet is probably survey/salvage as a final fall back. Either way, always have a back up plan that is fairly safe. It takes a LOT longer to build up to an end game fleet since you generally end up leaving half of your ships behind at any given point, but even that slow build is much, much faster than restarting the game over and over again hoping that this time you'll be lucky enough to win 100% of your fights....